Make Rooftop Solar Economically Attractive

India has enormous rooftop space across homes, apartment buildings, commercial properties, schools, hospitals, factories, and other institutions that could generate electricity close to where it is consumed.

India has already taken major steps to encourage rooftop solar, including subsidies for residential installations, net-metering/net-billing frameworks and the PM Surya Ghar: Muft Bijli Yojana. The challenge is therefore no longer simply introducing rooftop solar. It is making rooftop solar consistently easy and economically attractive across India.

Consumers can still encounter differences in state regulations, approval processes, grid connections, metering, treatment of surplus electricity, and financing. Apartment buildings and housing societies face additional complications because they share roofs and electricity infrastructure.

If installing rooftop solar is complicated, financially uncertain, or takes years to recoup the investment, millions of consumers who could generate electricity will keep buying all their power from the grid.

Build on India’s existing rooftop-solar programs and create a simpler, more predictable national framework that makes generating electricity from rooftops economically attractive for households, housing societies, businesses and institutions.

The framework should simplify applications and approvals through a digital single-window process, establish clear time limits for utilities to provide grid connections and meters, and create predictable rules governing how surplus electricity is compensated.

Consumers should be able to clearly understand before investing what the system will cost, how much electricity it is expected to generate, what they will save, and how surplus electricity will be valued.

India should also:

– Expand affordable financing so consumers can install solar without bearing the entire upfront cost.
– Enable banks and financial institutions to offer standardized rooftop-solar loans with repayment linked to expected electricity savings.
– Make rooftop solar easier for apartment buildings and housing societies through shared/community solar arrangements and simplified allocation of generated electricity among residents.
– Establish stable, transparent rules for net metering, net billing and compensation for electricity exported to the grid.
– Allow rooftop systems to incorporate battery storage where economically beneficial.
– Simplify installation standards and certification while maintaining electrical, structural, and fire safety.
– Make it easier for businesses, schools, hospitals and other institutions to install systems sized to their actual electricity requirements.
Publish installation timelines, approval performance and rooftop-solar adoption by electricity distribution company so unnecessary delays become visible.

Government subsidies can help accelerate adoption, particularly among lower- and middle-income households, but the long-term objective should be a market where falling technology costs, affordable financing, electricity savings and fair compensation for surplus power make rooftop solar economically viable without permanent subsidies.

India is not starting from zero. Programs such as PM Surya Ghar, residential subsidies, net-metering/net-billing arrangements, and digital application processes have already created a foundation for rooftop solar. The next step is to make the economics and customer experience sufficiently simple and predictable that rooftop solar increasingly grows because it saves consumers money, rather than primarily because the government subsidizes it.

The United States provides a useful example. Millions of American households and businesses have invested in rooftop solar using a combination of falling equipment costs, financing, tax incentives and arrangements that compensate customers for electricity exported to the grid. The U.S. Department of Energy describes rooftop solar economics in terms of electricity-bill savings, financing and compensation for surplus generation—the same factors that ultimately determine whether Indian consumers will adopt rooftop solar at scale.

California demonstrates the potential at large scale. The California Energy Commission reported that rooftop solar generation increased roughly tenfold between 2012 and 2022, reaching more than 24,000 GWh in 2022.

Australia provides another strong example of widespread rooftop-solar adoption, showing that distributed generation can become a significant part of a country’s electricity system.

India can build on these experiences while designing its own model: simple approvals, affordable financing, predictable grid connection and fair compensation for surplus electricity.

With India’s abundant sunlight, enormous number of rooftops and growing electricity demand, the opportunity is particularly large. Every economically viable rooftop installation can lower the owner’s electricity purchases, generate power close to where it is consumed and reduce the need for additional land for large solar projects.

The long-term objective should be simple: rooftop solar should become an investment households and businesses choose because the economics make sense—not because they need a government subsidy to make it worthwhile.

I like the U.S./California example more than Australia alone for India We Deserve because it demonstrates the combination you’re proposing: private ownership + financing + grid connection + compensation for excess generation + consumer economics.